Service held for washed-out grave victims

PROVIDENCE—Rhode Island officials held a memorial service for 71 men, women and children whose remains were uncovered and then reburied in a state cemetery.

The state Department of Transportation says the Tuesday service included music, flowers on each gravestone and a wreath-laying ceremony.

Hundreds who died at the former State Farm, which included a work house, an almshouse, a prison and an insane asylum, had been buried in an unmarked cemetery from 1873 to 1918.

But the construction of Route 37 in the 1960s covered the cemetery. And in 2006, heavy spring rains uncovered some of the remains.

Transportation director Michael Lewis says the department has been committed to reburying the people with dignity.

The reburials were completed last summer. Headstones and landscaping were added this spring.